The Story of Writing

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" is published, Alcoholics Anonymous , or the “Big Book” is published, and the Good Friday Agreement is signed. Happy birthdays to David Halberstam and Anne Lamott - and a reading from "The Great Gatsby."

Lee surrenders to Grant, and the birthday club includes Charles Baudelaire, Paule Marshall, and Sam Harris - with a reading from Virginia Woolf's "The Waves."

Franklin D. Roosevelt freezes wages and prices across the U.S., techies gather to create a new computer programming language and fortunately Grace Hopper was there. Today's reading is from Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations."

The Teapot Dome scandal erupts, it's National Beer Day in the U.S., and this is the Internet's symbolic birthday. The birthday club includes Victoria Ocampo, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and Billie Holiday - with a reading from Agatha Christie's "Sparkling Cyanide."

The birthday club includes Leonara Carrington, Ram Dash, Merle Haggard, and Homero Aridjis - with a reading from Carrington.

The Petition of Compromise, the American Birth Control League, and the birthday club includes Algernon Charles Swinburne, Barbara Holland, and Pharrell Williams - with a reading from Swinburne's "The Garden of Proserpine."

NATO is created and the birthday club includes Muddy Waters and Maya Angelou - with a reading from Angelou's "Letter to My Daughter."

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks to workers during the Memphis sanitation strike, the Panama Papers are published, and happy birthdays to Washington Irving and Jane Goodall - with a reading from Goodall's "Reason for Hope."

The birthday club includes Giacomo Casanova, Hans Christian Anderson, Emile Zola, and Camille Paglia - with a reading from "The Story of My Life," by Casanova.

It is the beginning of what poet T. S. Eliot called "the cruelest month," and it is April Fool's Day. The birthday club includes Sergei Rachmaninoff and Milan Kundera - with a reading from Lord Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage."

Spain's "Edict of Expulsion," the U.S. Motion Picture Production Code goes into effect, the U.S. launches the Civilian Conservation Corps, and happy birthday to Johann Sebastian Bach - with a reading from "Aurora Leigh," by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Evan Gershkovich should be free. More info, here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68679483 The U.S. buys Alaska, the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is signed, and the birthday club includes Anna Sewell, Carl Lutz, Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Shahla Sherkat, Marie-Christine Koundja, and Tobias Hill - with a reading from the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Ar...

Canada gets its birthday, residents of Washington, D.C. get the vote, and (the rest of) the birthday club includes Sheila Kitzinger, Eric Idle, Alec Wilkinson, Jo-Ann Mapson, and Evelyn C. White - with a reading from Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass."

Happy birthdays to Maxim Gorky, Nelson Algren, Iris Chang, and Jennifer Weiner - with a reading from Algren's "The Neon Wilderness."

U.S. President Andrew Johnson vetoes the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the birthday club includes Jane Colden Charles Mackay, Jelena Demitrijevic, and Louis Simpson - with a reading of Mackay's "No Enemies."

The first printing of Aesop's Fables in English, signing the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, and the birthday club includes Julie-Victoire Daubie, Robert Frost, Joseph Campbell, Viktor Frankl, and Tennessee Williams - with a reading of Frost's "Lodged."

Sir Walter Raleigh gets a royal patent to settle North America, Percy Bysshe Shelley gets booted from Oxford for publishing "The Necessity of Atheism," and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks to the marchers who reached Montgomery, and happy birthdays to Flannery O'Connor and Gloria Steinem - with a reading from O'Connor's "Wise Blood."

The UK passes the Quartering Act, the cause of tuberculosis is discovered, and the birthday club includes Matilda Joslyn Gage, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Erica Kennedy - with a reading from "A Princess of Mars," by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Patrick Henry gives his "Give me liberty or give me death!" speech, Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero implores his nation's military to stop murdering civilians, and the birthday club includes Akira Kurosawa and Subhadra Joshi - with a reading from Henry's speech.

The first treaty between native Americans and European settlers, the first patent for the laser, a big win for reproductive freedom at the U.S. Supreme Court, and the birthday club includes Louis L'Amour, Stephen Sondheim, George Benson, and Andrew Lloyd Webber - and a reading from "Middlemarch," by George Eliot.

Tennessee prohibits the teaching of evolution, the first comic-con, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate, and the birthday club includes Dorothea Beale, Son House, Forrester Mars, Senior, and Solomon Burke - with a reading from Dorothea Beale's "Work and Play in Girls’ Schools."

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" is published, so is Einstein's theory of relativity, and the birthday club includes Ovid, Anne Bradstreet, and Carl Reiner - and a reading from Ovid's "The Art of Love."

England's House of Commons abolishes the House of Lords, and happy birthdays to Minna Canth, Philip Roth, and Clara Breed - with a reading from Breed's article "Americans With the Wrong Ancestors."

The New York 'Conspiracy' of 1741, and the birthday club includes Wilfred Owen, Unita Blackwell, Frances Cress Welsing - and a reading of Wilfred Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth."

Happy birthdays to Bayard Rustin and Nat "King" Cole - and a reading from "The Secret Garden," by Frances Hodgson Burnett.